curiousmarc posts
Posts: 162
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Soyuz Clock Livestream Summary Video
https://youtu.be/WWqBvvoVPSsThis is a summary video made from the Soyuz Clock Patreon Livestream. The majority of the footage is much higher quality though, coming from my regular SONY RX-10 camera. This will likely will become the base for the later public video. Thanks to all who followed the Live...
Soyuz Space Clock Livestream
We've got another Soyuz clock, this time from Steve Jurvetson’s collection. This one is older than my digital one which we already restored, and it’s entirely electro-mechanical. Join us on Livestream on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 10 am Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) as we open it up, try to figure o...
Test Livestream - Soyuz Clock Setup
https://youtu.be/2u4qLteqenEFolks, the official Livestream with the clock will be tomorrow, but I am doing a test run right now while I am setting up and getting the Cesium clock restarted. Hop on if you want to follow it!Marc
Heads up for Soyuz Clock Livestream
Dear Patrons,We are going to try something new with our first Patreon Livestream attempt. I am planning to work on this magnificent Soyuz clock, which we have on loan from Steve Jurvetson's space collection. The rest of the team will be Zooming in, watching along with you.The Livestream is tenta...
HP 7132A Strip Chart Recorder Snippet
https://youtu.be/Hn4k6jCQz9oHere is a small treat for the higher Patreon tiers. Sorry folks, I haven't done very much extra for the higher tiers. I'm just hopelessly behind all the time, and when I do small Patreon videos it is still non-negligible work, and it seems silly not to open it up ...
Another Hewlett-Packard Loot in L.A.
There was (and still is) an ongoing auction in Los Angeles from the former Max Sands test instrument rental company. Which has tons of very, very antiquated instruments (how could they still possibly rent them?). I could have bought my entire collection in one fell swoop. Instead I went looking for ...
Dial-A-Level lives again!
While on my expedition to Excess Solutions to pick up my enclosure for the Apollo GSE box project, I also snatched this 1970's "Dial-A-Level" contraption. I was looking for an on/off controller to do the temperature control for my Apollo IRIG gyroscope. The gyro needs to be regulated to ...
Building an Apollo-style GSE control panel
It seems that a few of you had Apollo Twist-Lite switches in your drawers, and on top of that are generous enough to donate them to the channel. Thanks to your generosity, and also to some good eBay scraping for the few reasonably priced bits and pieces of Twist Lite switches, I have now accumulated...
2020 ends with an HP 9825 Meltdown!
https://youtu.be/hCA-iw3x59k2020 was *really* a rotten year. While I was filming my 100k subs video, on the last day of 2020, my HP 9825 had an "accident". See details in the video. The one you see in the 100k subs video is a backup unit that had been recently donated by viewer Bob Walance (...
Cheap auction lot brings nice surprise from the 1960s
You guessed it, I won yet another auction lot. The "reason" I got this was for the Bird Wattmeter (that is, if there ever was any reasoning in this of course). But it turned out the juicy stuff was elsewhere.Let's start with the Bird Model 43 Thruline Wattmeter. It's a meter to measu...
My HP 8447F RF Amplifier is Repaired!
I thought this repair was going to be trivial and a bit boring, so I didn't film it. However it predictably degenerated into the usual bunch of unexpected surprises, so here is the story in pictures.Remember that cute HP fellow from one of my previous posts? It's an HP 8447F, 100 kHz to 1.3 ...
Magic Vintage Electronics Repair Pants
Shameless plug for merch. I made a reproduction of the HP dude's magic pants on my Teespring store: https://curiousmarcs-store.myteespring.co/listing/magic-repair-pants?product=1166Your vintage electronics repairs are guaranteed to be successful if you wear it!Says "Magic Vintage Repair Pant...
HP Microwave Amp Module Goodness
I recently bought yet another HP 8447F. Actually it came bundled in a very cheap lot that I got for another instrument so it is sort of a nice freebee. It contains two lab grade wideband amplifiers to 1.3 GHz. One of the channels (the preamp) passed the VNA test with legendary HP performance, almost...
Quick video update: catching the HP clock in the act!
YouTube direct link: https://youtu.be/wbbx4Mam3asToday I was able to visualize the HP 9825 and the Nanoprocessor interacting with the clock chip by hooking up my clock chip test board to a live HP clock board. I got a kick out of that and wanted to share it with you.After that brief moment of succes...
1 MHz Crystal and IC Post Mortem
I had to know. I opened (carefully) the 1 MHz crystal that had failed. I suspected some kind of mechanical failure and boy, did it have one. Or many. A big bad scallop had been taken out, you can see where it hit the can. Also at 90 degrees of that, there is another mark on the can and a smaller chi...
Lots of HP Nanoprocessors and TI Clock Chips
My previous video on TI clock chips was a (rewarding) detour on the road to repair my HP 98035 clock modules. Thanks to the contributions of former HP 9825 developer Steve Leibson http://www.hp9825.com/ Patron Jack Rubin, collector Bob Rosenbloom https://youtu.be/2OkTm0vI7As and vintage HP warehouse...
Patron only demonetized video
Dang. Even if you put cover music and cover artist credits, these days it still gets demonetized. But the Patrons get the better version no matter what :-).https://youtu.be/9tzVE9pKpfU
LED Watch Chip Goodness
Remember that Chinese sourced TI clock chip that we decapped with Antoine? Not fake at all tells me Ken Shirriff. But does it actually work? It sure did not when I put it on my HP board. One simple way to find out. Chinese sourced TI chip, 1970's HP bubble LED, proto board, and a bit of fun reve...
Weird Clocks Family Portrait
After putting back together my Soyuz clock, I assembled my various other clocks for a family portrait:- the large flip clock is my Solari Dator 10 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59Xs5gCX_Sch1LoIm8TcWQ2 which you often hear clunking in the background.- two HP instruments with clocks...
Intel 486SX poster installed!
Antoine sent me this giant printout of one of his many splendid chip pictures. It has been installed as part of the lab beautification project. Thanks Antoine! I feel a chip poster business coming. I'll be waiting for Ken's report on what every single transistor does...
Taking a pause for inventory
I have been taking a little pause from videos to re-organize and do an inventory of my collection. I was starting to lose track of which item came from whom, when and for how much, and with quite a few patrons and viewers making donations, I also need to quickly be able check for duplicates, particu...
Collecting in Quarantine
Pic 1: We might be in quarantine, but July has been a great month for the collection. And in no small part thanks to viewers and generous Patrons.Pic 2: Patron John Lawson, whose tube shack you have seen in the radio active tube video https://youtu.be/VYSWIdDcbGU drove all the way from Nevada, I dro...
Genius Model Maker Makes Miniature Retro Computers
If you had not seen this before, Canadian modeling genius Nicolas Temese keeps making astounding models of retro gear.His HP 2645A terminal has a screen that actually works! View his full post here: https://imgur.com/gallery/bSbs0L3He also made an IBM 1401 data center that will come to the Computer ...
My NAD amp is fine, thank you very much.
I took out the old HP 428B current probe to check that the current going in my power supply components is normal, and that I just didn't cover up another fault, as the conspiracy mill says on YouTube. It is a very old instrument (using tubes!), but still in perfect calibration. I checked it of c...
Carl's DSKY relight project short video
Carl has released a nice short video were he shows his progress on re-lighting two original Apollo DSKY displays. He has now switched on the second display which is similar to the flown ones, and has the more greenish final color. This spare display was never used, and appears to be in superb shape....
Pulser Perfect
This is a little epilogue to the HP 8082A pulser repair. I swapped the second circuit in, with the faster transistors, and it indeed produces narrower minimum width pulses, with the required 1 ns rise time. But at the minimum pulse width, the non-delayed pulse was still fatter than the delayed one b...
Carl's clickety DSKY
Carl sent us this video of his DSKY clicking away. This is a genuine Block I DSKY screen controlled by a genuine DSKY Block I relay module. These were latching relays (with mechanical "memory"), and they are deliciously noisy. We have only one relay module, so he cannot control the whole DSK...
1202 in Carl's Lab
Looks like Carl has hit a 1202 in the lab while in P63! He has been working on trying to light up an original DSKY luminescent display from Marcel's collection. He's got an original DSKY high voltage 800 Hz power supply, a relay module (also from Marcel) and the precious Samtec NASA female p...
Power Supply Repaired (preview)
Well it ended up all good, but not without a few more twists. Just finished the video, will likely make it public tomorrow, but you get to know (and post public comments if you watch in on YouTube) earlier. And if you wonder, I was relieved too. I wasn't so confident this was going to work out. ...
HP 8082A "quick" restoration turns into IC reproduction project
While I was waiting for the replacement ICs that died in a sparky power supply incident last week, I decided to turn my attention to a recently acquired HP 8082A fast pulse generator. I thought it was going to be another quick one-afternoon power supply job. Well, this "does not power up" un...
